Communism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===== Class conflict and historical materialism ===== {{main|Class conflict|Historical materialism}} At the root of Marxism is historical materialism, the [[materialist]] conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the [[mode of production]] and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the [[Industrial Revolution]] ushered the world into the new [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]]. Before capitalism, certain [[working class]]es had ownership of instruments used in production; however, because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the [[proletariat]] and the [[bourgeoisie]]. These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses [[private ownership]] of the [[means of production]], earning profit via the [[surplus value]] generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.<ref>{{cite book |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |author-link=Friedrich Engels |date=1969 |chapter="Principles of Communism". No. 4 β "How did the proletariat originate?" |title=Marx & Engels Selected Works |volume=I |location=Moscow |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |pages=81β97}}</ref> According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within [[feudalism]] captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal [[ruling class]] out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished.<ref>[[Friedrich Engels|Engels, Friedrich]]. [1847] (1969). "[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm#015 "Was not the abolition of private property possible at an earlier time?]" ''[[Principles of Communism]]''. ''[[Marx/Engels Collected Works]]''. '''I'''. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 81β97.</ref> Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the [[common ownership]] of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into [[Communist society|communism as a new mode of production]]. In between capitalism and communism, there is the [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]; it is the defeat of the [[bourgeois state]] but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This ''dictatorship'', based on the [[Paris Commune]]'s model,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Priestland |first=David |date=January 2002 |url=https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/13937520.pdf |title=Soviet Democracy, 1917β91 |journal=[[European History Quarterly]] |location=Thousand Oaks, California |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=111β130 |doi=10.1177/0269142002032001564 |s2cid=144067197 |access-date=19 August 2021 |via=Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung |quote=Lenin defended all four elements of Soviet democracy in his seminal theoretical work of 1917, ''State and Revolution''. The time had come, Lenin argued, for the destruction of the foundations of the bourgeois state, and its replacement with an ultra-democratic 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' based on the model of democracy followed by the communards of Paris in 1871. Much of the work was theoretical, designed, by means of quotations from Marx and Engels, to win battles within the international Social Democratic movement against Lenin's arch-enemy Kautsky. However, Lenin was not operating only in the realm of theory. He took encouragement from the rise of a whole range of institutions that seemed to embody class-based, direct democracy, and in particular the soviets and the factory committees, which demanded the right to 'supervise' ('kontrolirovat') (although not to take the place of) factory management.}}</ref> is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of [[universal suffrage]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Twiss |first=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |pages=28β29 |date=2014 |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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